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Wired.com recently got an exclusive look at a location-based mobile phone game called Geo that lets you play the part of a virtual gangster, "tagging" turf by actually walking around your city with your GPS-enabled phone.

Created by location-based services provider Useful Networks (actual motto: "We take the BS out of LBS"), Geo will be available in early 2009 for a variety of phones and carriers that support Java or Brew. Even more interesting is that the company plans an iPhone version. From the demo that I saw, it seems like a clever use of location-based gaming – here's how it was explained to me.

As you go different places in the real world with your mobile phone, you can attempt to take them for your own. The map of your location will be divided up into squares of approximately 800 square feet each. If a square is currently unoccupied by another player, you'll be able to mark it as your own. In this way, as you move around from place to place, you can build your virtual empire, which gains you foot soldiers, money, etc. If you want to defend your turf against other players, you can defend it with these resources.

If you want to take someone else's turf, you'll send out some fighters and the battle will automatically play out based on your stats versus theirs. You'll be able to forge alliances with other players if you need to take down a particularly well-defended turf. If you don't feel like taking over another player's squares, you can also "tag" them and leave messages for all players to read.

You'll be able to create an avatar and customize a "crib" with tiny pixelated furniture if you're really, really into this game and want to manage every aspect of your online persona. Useful described the art style as "Puff Daddy meets Donald Trump."

Now, you're probably thinking the same thing that I was at this point: It sure seems like an easy path to victory to just head to some remote location, wander into the woods or something, and just start capturing every territory in sight, confident that no one will ever go there to challenge you. But as it turns out, this won't be a permanent solution, because to maintain your hold on your turfs, you have to keep visiting them – at least once every two weeks, I was told.

This leads us to Geo's big issue – its success or failure is going to hinge on how it is picked up by gamers. What happens if no one but you decides to play it with any seriousness? Is it going to feel that great capturing piles of territory if no one else wants it? Conversely, what if the game ends up being dominated by a couple of hardcore players, and no casual gamers can get a square inch of territory?

I'm interested to see how Geo fares, though, because of the fundamental concept of using real-world territory in a land-grab game. What do you guys think?